


Wake me up when September ends

by Polarnacht



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alec Lightwood-centric, Angst, Control Issues, Dark, Episode Related, Hurt Alec Lightwood, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:21:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23892262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polarnacht/pseuds/Polarnacht
Summary: When Alec jumps from the ledge of Magnus’ roof, it is the spell doing this to him – or isn’t it?"Control. If someone were to ask Alec, everything came back to control. Having it. Losing it. Fighting for it. Gaining it back. If it just were not so tiring. And the pain so real whenever you lost it."
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Comments: 28
Kudos: 125
Collections: DL;DR: Shadowhunters Fic





	Wake me up when September ends

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the band "Green Day"

***

Control. If someone were to ask Alec, everything came back to control. Having it. Losing it. Fighting for it. Gaining it back. If it just were not so tiring. And the pain so real whenever you lost it.

***

For the first 12 years, Alec felt more or less in control of his life. He was the heir to the Lightwood legacy, born and raised to be the next leader. It was not always easy to be that, but he got used to it. He took care of his two younger siblings, the 3 years younger madcap Izzy and the not less wild 9 years younger Max. He loved both with his whole heart, like only an older brother could or maybe a father, a real one, not the one they actual had. As an older brother, Alec felt responsible for his younger siblings’ actions, so he gladly took the heat of his parents’ anger whenever possible, despite being a child himself.

He knew what was expected from him and he knew how to achieve it - he studied hard and trained even harder. _Be the next Head of the Institute. Be a role model. Be a leader. Be an honor to the Lightwood name. Be a husband. Be a father. Be a Lightwood_. His parents had said these things so many times to him, he felt like they were engrained in his DNA. But it was fine, really. He knew he wanted that, too. He was in control.

Then things changed and Alec’s tight grip on his life fell apart at the seams.

It all started with the arrival of a blond boy. His mismatched eyes pierced directly Alec’s heart and soul. Instantly, he knew that this boy was as his to protect as it had been Izzy or Max when they had been born. Only that it felt different. Jace was a whirlwind, strong and yet vulnerable, untouchable on the outside, but soft towards people he trusted. And he trusted Alec. Not from day one, but slowly, gradually, Jace opened up about his cruel past, the death of his father, his nightmares. And Alec fell, hard and fast, losing a bit more of his control with every inch he fell.

His parents adored Jace, he was the warrior Alec would never be. He had skills far beyond his age, he was stronger, faster, better, fearless - fear had been beaten out of him a long time ago - personality traits not only the Lightwoods admired in a Shadowhunters, everyone did. Jace shone bright, blending the others around him, giving Alec the possibility to hide in his shadow. As much as the others looked up to Jace, as much Alec knew that he needed protection, just as every other child did. He made it his responsibility, adding it to the heavy pile he already carried, not contemplating that he himself was still a child. Not thinking of the things he needed but never got. He let Jace sleep in his bed to protect him from his nightmares, not caring that half the nights he stayed awake, unable to fall back to sleep, his mind racing, trying to understand what he felt and why Jace made him feel the way he did.

Getting married had never seemed like a big deal, it was just something Shadowhunters did. They got married young, as they died young. They had children to ensure the existence of the Shadowhunter race. Love? Was just an abstract concept. Until Jace had fallen into his life, being everything Alec never had wanted but apparently everything he always had needed.

Alec struggled with his feelings. Being gay was not something he had ever imagined. He tried hard to get interested in girls. Real ones, pop stars, porn stars. But it never worked. He just ended up staring at the male co-stars instead of the female ones. Using the internet for research, he understood that in the mundane world it was something normal. But Shadowhunters were backward, homophobic. His father had broken his Parabatai bond to Jace’s father due to Michael being in love with him. That his father had easily shunned his soulmate scared Alec, so he decided to bottle up his feelings, hiding beneath the façade of the caring older brother. And it was not an entire lie, he cared for Jace. Only not entirely brotherly.

When Jace asked Alec to become his Parabatai, he gladly said yes. He knew it was forbidden to have a romantic relationship with his Parabatai, but he didn’t plan to act on his feelings anyway. He just wanted to be as close as possible to Jace, without disappointing his parents. And didn’t all Parabatai love each other? How could they not when they shared a soul? He just needed to make sure that it stayed the way it was, platonic. Jace should never know the truth. Control. Alec just had to control his feelings.

Over the years, Alec got a master in controlling his emotions. Jace never considered him something else than his Parabatai, closer than friends, closer than blood. Maybe even closer than lovers, not that Alec had a comparison for that. He never loved anyone but Jace. Never fucked anyone, never even kissed. He waited, not sure what exactly for, leaving his parents suspicious and disappointed. They wanted the Lightwood legacy to be continued.

He felt the constant pressure of his parents, always breathing down his neck. _Be smarter, be better, be a boyfriend. Be a man, be married, you’re 21 already._ Sometimes Alec felt the heavy weight of it press him down, the pain of his constant failure not dull as most of the time, but sparking. Sometimes it felt like he couldn’t breathe.

_Be a leader, be a warrior, be the son we deserve. Be someone else. Be like Jace._ Whenever he felt the pain inside become too much, his life slipping out of his control too fast and too far, he went to the training room, exhausting himself so much that there was nothing left to feel than the pain in his bleeding knuckles, fractured fingers or broken rips from sparing. When the punching bag was covered in bloody strains and his knuckles were raw, he felt like the air was finally getting into his system again, he felt everything slip back into place, back in his control.

Jace sometimes looked weary at him, but Alec had learned to control the bond. He could open and close it, making sure that Jace never really had a reason to worry. Worrying was his responsibility as the oldest.

When Jace’s arrival had been the first hole in his tightly knitted life, Clary’s ripped the rest apart, the girl not caring about the damage she caused. She came in like a wracking ball, tearing down everything Alec had ever built. She was nothing more than a mundane, barely more than a child, yet she thought she knew everything. And the worst, Jace, his Parabatai, followed her every move, never questioning her, choosing her over him countless times. It hurt. So much. Alec trained harder, leaving the training room more often bloody than not.

_Be my friend, be my Parabatai, be my brother._ He pushed himself to his limits, trying to find a balance between following the rules of the Clave like the leader he was supposed to be and protecting his Parabatai and his sister, like the older brother he was. And he got nothing in return. He was used that his parents never acknowledged his efforts, but it hurt to see his siblings acting alike. Every unsanctioned mission pushed Alec a bit further away from his goal to be the next Head, and every single one was out of his control, as Jace and Izzy just decided to do them despite his insistence of following protocol. He loathed it. He couldn’t bring himself to loath his siblings, but he loathed their actions. And he truly loathed the redhead.

The worst was not even that she managed to nearly kill them and her mundane friend constantly. The worst was that she exposed his feelings and dared to laugh about it. His forbidden feelings towards his Parabatai where his most well-guarded secret, but when a memory demon requested a picture of their loved ones in exchange for Clary’s memories of the Shadow World, he lost control over this choice. Without mercy, a crystal clear picture of Jace showed up. He panicked and broke the circle, his exposure not even worth anything, as they didn’t get any information from the demon.

What maybe even hurt more was the nonchalant way Jace dealt with it. Instead of at least acknowledging it, he dismissed it within a heartbeat, leaving Alec behind in even more pain than before.

This night, he punched the training bag until he heard the distinctive noise of breaking bones. But he cherished the pain. It was pain he could control. He could punch harder and it increased. He could use an Iratze and it would lessen. He could leave it as it was. _I’m. In. Fucking. Control_. Alec breathed hard, every word punctuated with another punch to the bag and another stab of pain jolting through his body. Yet, he welcomed it with open arms, the outer pain muting the pain within. He deserved to suffer. He would own the pain. Control it.

The only good thing in a while was meeting the High Warlock of Brooklyn. Meeting Magnus was a bit like meeting Jace for the first time. When Magnus addressed him as “pretty boy”, he felt himself fall, uncontrolled, fast, hard. He loved and hated how unraveled he felt. He hated his inability to form a coherent sentence around the warlock, he hated the way Magnus’ flirting made him blush and come undone.

He loved being seen for the first time in forever. He loved the world Magnus’ embodied, a world he had never dared to think of too much, but found it now laying in front of him. He didn’t hesitate a second to offer his strength to Magnus to save a werewolf, Clary’s stepdad. The connection he felt towards the warlock never broke again. Sharing a magical bond like that, even briefly, was unique, not many Shadowhunters offered this to a Downworlder. But it felt right.

He felt himself drawn to Magnus as he had once been drawn to Jace. A part of him would always love the blond, he had been his first crush, he was his Parabatai – but in Magnus, he thought he had found someone who could be his in a different way. Someone he could love for real, without guilt, someone who loved him back. Who saw him and not only the person he could be. Yet, he was not quite ready. He had been in the closet for too long to just go for it. And, truth be told, Magnus intimated him a bit. He was so much older, so much more experienced. Not only in love affairs, but life in general. It was hard to believe that such a man was interested in someone like him.

He was not given the time to process it. To restore the family name, which had suffered in the past due to his parent’s lack of character and currently due to Alec’s lack of leadership and to _finally_ settle down and produce kids, his parents pressured him into an arranged marriage with Lydia Branwell. Lydia was a nice girl and she was as much or as little in love with him than he was in love with her, so not at all. Before Jace, before Magnus, Alec thought he could have settled for someone like Lydia and be happy, at least as happy as most Shadowhunters were. They shared the same values, were both dedicated to their families. A solid match.

But having true love in front of him, he knew he wouldn’t be able to. His mind, his body and soul longed for more. Despite knowing this, he was determined to push through with the wedding, figuring a later divorce was quieter than cancelling last minute. But when Magnus showed up, Lydia and he already standing in front of the altar, he felt the pressure behind those beautiful, pleading cat eyes. He swallowed dry, feeling all eyes on him, encouraging ones from Izzy and Jace, understanding ones from Lydia, judgmental ones from his parents and the rest of the Clave. He had always hated to be the center of everyone’s attention, Jace’s shining presence a welcome excuse to hide, but now all eyes were expectantly on him. All wanted something and he knew he could not fulfill everyone’s desire, no matter what. He would fail someone, and there were few things he hated more than failure. But he also felt the quicken of his heartbeat the moment Magnus entered the hall and the warmness spreading in his body and he knew what he had to do.

He stepped away from Lydia towards Magnus. The few steps seemed to last forever and not long enough. When he reached Magnus, he saw the gleam and the love in those eyes and knew he had made the right choice, yet, he wished he would not have been forced to make that choice, in front of everyone above all. When he felt warm lips pressed against his, he opened his mouth and kissed back, feverishly, heatedly. He was sacrificing a lot to stand here, so at least he could make it count.

As rushed as their beginning was, as rushed the rest of their relationship felt. He was head over heels in love with Magnus, there was no doubt about that. And the more his life fell apart, the more he clang to Magnus, pushing himself over every step on the way. Soon after their first kiss, Alec’s first kiss at all, they had sex, Alec trying to push away the thought that Magnus had been with 17.000 others before him.

He enjoyed the stolen moments with his warlock, finally being able to escape the pressure from the Clave, his parents, the desperate hunt for the Mortal Instruments and the war against Valentine. But the relationship was not as easy as Alec had hoped. Magnus hid things from him, never telling him the full truth about his eventful past, leaving Alec open and vulnerable, the well-known self-doubts and insecurities surfacing also with his lover. He made mistakes, trusting the wrong people with the right questions, leading nearly to a break up with Magnus. What should be his sanctuary, soon felt like another weight added to his shoulders. And he just couldn’t talk about it with anyone.

Magnus and his relationship was already stained, due to their lack of honest communication, Alec’s problems with Magnus’ past and the general pressure they faced: prejudices not only from Shadowhunters, but also from Downworlders. He just didn’t want to add fuel to it so he kept quiet.

Jace had to deal with the fact that Clary was his sister and jumped from their relationship to the next as if he had never mattered. He had been abducted by his father and had been tortured, the Clave along with their parents had labeled him a traitor. Alec couldn’t add on to these problems. He knew that he should have prevented all of it, it was his job to protect Jace – yet, he had failed. Miserably. Again.

Izzy was off due to reasons he didn’t quiet get, but there was something going on with her, she didn’t act like herself. As much as he wanted to talk to her, as much he didn’t want to cause her more stress or pain.

So he sucked everything up, trying to broaden his shoulders even more so that he could be strong for the others, hiding the pain he felt under bleeding wounds and broken bones, nothing an Iratze could not fix. But every time Alec went to the training room or the roof top, he needed a little more, a little more pain, a little more anguish to keep himself together, to still be in control. Of his body, his life, his soul.

But no matter how hard he tried, he felt his life slipping away further and further, like everything spiraled downwards. No matter what he did, he couldn’t save anyone, not Jace, not Izzy, not himself. No one.

***

Alec had always hated parties, unlike his siblings he had always felt out of place. This time, it was no different, even though he actually was the host. He shouldn’t be the host, his father should be the one celebrating Max’ first runing ceremony – but of course he was too busy. So Alec took over, using the opportunity to emphasize his relationship with Magnus. He wanted Magnus to stay and he wanted the rest finally to get that too. And who was better to throw a party than Magnus?

When Alec downed his first drink and listened to his little brother insulting Magnus, he doubted his decision. Clearly Max had been influenced by their mother, yet it hurt to hear him talk like that to his boyfriend. It was great to see Jace jump in though, at least he supported him. Unlike Izzy, he was there. He had no idea where his little sister was, she was supposed to be there and have his back, at least for once, as she was very comfortable being the center of a party. Alec gritted his teeth and downed his second drink.

He hated alcohol nearly as much as he hated parties, but for whatever reason everyone always kept pressuring him into drinking. _Try this, try that, we find something you like. Fuck it._ Sometimes it was easier to just drink than argue, so Alec went with it. And he couldn’t argue that the warm feeling which radiated through his body was nice, especially since he felt so cold nowadays. But he really didn’t want to think about what made him cold inside. He didn’t want to think about the fact that he had killed Clary’s mom with his bare hands. He didn’t want to think about the way it had felt to push his hands inside her chest, claw his hands around her still beating heart and rip it out, the last heartbeat pulsing in his closed hand. He didn’t want to think about the feeling of her dry blood on his hands, chest, skin. On his soul. He really didn’t want to think about the guilt. About the fact that he was a Shadowhunter and should have been able to fight the demonic possession. He didn’t want to think about his flaws and weaknesses again. So he just downed his third drink. It was a party, after all, wasn’t it?

Though it didn’t actually feel like one. He kept stumbling around, he saw Simon and Clary fight about one thing or another, he didn’t even try to understand what it was about. He heard Jace yelling at his mother, why she had disowned him so quickly. And normally, he would have engaged, backing him up as the good Parabatai he always aimed to be. But today, he just couldn’t. He needed to wash his hands again. He had done that for the fourth time now alone this evening, but they still felt sticky and smelled metallic. He swallowed down bile.

He ruffled his hair in a desperate gesture. _Where was Izzy?_ _Where was Magnus?_ He fingered nervously on the top button of his shirt. _Why wouldn’t it open_? He just couldn’t breathe. The music was too loud, the people too chatty, the air was so thick he nearly chocked on it. He just needed to get away. He felt the room spinning while he made his way to the door, desperately trying to not fall and to breathe. He just needed to fucking breathe.

When he finally made it to the roof top, he was soaked in cold sweat and he panted heavily. He needed to be alone. He needed Magnus. Or Jace. Or Izzy. He needed to be alone. He most definitely didn’t need Clary. But there she was. _You killed my mother, Alec. I blame you for her death. You killed her._

_Well, get in line. I blame myself._ He just realized that he had reached the edge of the roof. He looked down for what felt like an eternity before he turned around. The pounding of the music had lessened, the rush in his ears had muted, his hands were not shaking anymore. Here, standing at the edge between life and death, he felt he could breathe again. The pressure was still there, all the expectations. The pain. _Be someone we can be proud of, be proud of yourself, be who you are, be what we want you to be. Be a man, be a Shadowhunter. Be yourself._ Alec wanted to laugh. If he just knew how.

But the longer he stood there, on the edge, the quieter the voices got. More distant. More irrelevant. The pain fading into the background like it used to when physical pain was taking over. Clary still stood there, one hand reached out to him, still talking frantically. But he couldn’t hear her anymore. For the first time in months, maybe forever, he just heard himself. He smiled, the kind of smile he had smiled very rarely in his life. Probably when Izzy had been born, though he didn’t remember it. Definitely when Max had been born. When Jace had crashed into his life. When they had become Parabatai. When he had kissed Magnus for the first time in private. He spread his arms wide, still smiling when he let himself fall. Finally free. Free of pain. Finally in control.

He felt the cold wind rushing over his body as if he was just another being who belonged into the air, when suddenly there was a restraint. It felt like ropes constraining him, pulling him upwards again. For a short moment, gravity and magic fought each other and Alec was not sure what he cheered on. In the end, magic won and he felt himself being pulled up again, wrapped up in a warm blanket made of magic. Away from freedom and control. But towards life, pressure, guilt and pain. But also towards friendship and love. Maybe being in control was not the most important thing in the world. Maybe surviving was. Maybe.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos & comments are loved 💙


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